


rare and sweet as cherry wine

by zigostia



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Artist Sherlock Holmes, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2019-07-24
Packaged: 2020-07-19 05:40:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19968934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zigostia/pseuds/zigostia
Summary: Sherlock didn’t know if colours were beautiful or not, but he knew that colours meant love, and love meant happiness, and so colours must have been very beautiful indeed.





	rare and sweet as cherry wine

**Author's Note:**

> Quick briefing on this particular AU: People see things in black and white until they meet their soulmate(s). From then, they are able to sse colour for the rest of their lives.
> 
> Title from Cherry Wine by Hozier.

He had grey eyes, said his mother, who had been married at the time, and happily married, too, so it must’ve been true. Steel-grey, with the slightest tinge of blue. 

“And hair as black as can be,” she murmured, resting a hand atop his head. “My beautiful boy.” And his mother had always been right, so it must’ve been true, although Sherlock hadn’t understood why.

What made something beautiful? And she had answered: something that makes you happy, my love, with a kiss to his forehead, curls smoothed back with a warm palm. 

Mummy was beautiful. With her slight smile and delicate fingers, hair as soft as spider silk. Her eyes were blue, said his father. As blue as a summer sky, he’d sigh, as he trailed his hand down her neck and kissed her.

Sherlock thought of beauty, thought of the way his father looked at her mother, the way his eyes seemed to waver and burn with something that needed no colour for him to see. He thought of his midnight-blue (or so Mummy said) blanket on his fire-engine red bed. He looked down and saw dark and light and in-betweens.

He didn’t know if colours were beautiful or not, but he knew that colours meant love, and love meant happiness, and so colours must have been very beautiful indeed.

He had grey eyes, but they had changed; shifted, in the past few years. Or so his father said, brushing a thumb under his eyelids and peering into his pupils. He couldn’t see, but rather knew, that his father had eyes the colour of his, but just a nudge darker.

“Piercing eyes,” his father said, sounding proud. “You could make a proper lady swoon with those eyes.”

Why would he want to make a proper lady swoon?

His mother’s (summer sky) eyes closed when she laughed, properly laughed, tossed her head back and held her stomach laughed.

Sherlock could only remember this in his memories. Mummy hadn’t laughed like that in a long time. 

Now, Mummy smiled; sometimes, not even that. Now, she set him in his lap, even though he was way too big to sit on someone’s lap, not without squirming and wincing and cramping, but he did anyway and let her set him on her lap. She bounced him gently, stroking his hair the way he remembered when he was younger.

“Sherlock, I want you to remember this,” she said softly, melodious, sing-song. “I love you, and I will always love you. Even when I don’t act like it. Even when I don’t remember. I want you to remember, so that you can remind me if I forget. Okay, baby?”

What did she mean—forget?

“That’s not so important,” she said. “Promise me you’ll remember, okay?”

Sherlock nodded, and, from behind him, he felt his mother begin to cry.

When he was finally old enough to understand the properties of the brain and the chemicals and the paths, when the too-long, too-many syllable sounds morphed into diseases and disorders and terrible, terrible words, he held his father’s hand and looked up at him and asked if he would still love Mummy the way he used to.

He squeezed his hand so hard it hurt. “Why would I not?”

But he had thought love meant beauty, meant happiness—

What made something beautiful? When he asked his father, he was silent for a long time, then ran a thoughtful thumb in a tingling trail down the middle of Sherlock’s palm.

“If it makes you yearn for more,” he answered. “No matter how much you know you shouldn’t. No matter how much you know it would hurt.”

Sherlock poked his head into Mycroft’s room the very same day, asked his older brother the very same question.

“Brother mine,” he answered with a slight smile, “beauty is what you make of it. If you can convince yourself that it is beautiful, then it shall be beautiful; if you convince yourself it is hideous, then hideous it will be.”

Well, what did  _ Mycroft _ make of it?

“Perfection,” Mycroft responded, and then abruptly, he grabbed the leather-bound notebook on his desk, flipped it to a page, and shoved it, opened, towards him.

It was something along the lines of a mathematical proof. “Facts and figures, Sherlock, that is what I make of beauty.”

Sherlock took the notebook in his hands, and with the air of someone very serious and focused, read the entire thing from top to bottom, and, when he found that he could not understand, frowned in frustration and tried again.

His brother ruffled his hair. “What do  _ you  _ think of beauty, brother dear?”

Sherlock’s eyes paused on the last line of the page. He set it back on the table and pushed it away from him.

“I haven’t quite figured it out just yet,” he said, and left the room.

The day Mummy died, it rained. The day Mummy died, Sherlock pressed the tip of a pencil into paper hard enough to send graphite dust dancing through the air, and drew a harsh, dark outline of his mother's jawline slicing across the page.

The week Mummy died, he drew eight more: soft loops of eyelash, a crinkled corner of an eye, the delicate curve of the inside of her wrist, paper-white and wingtip-thin.

Bent over his newly-acquired sketchbook, he drew, and drew, and when calluses began to form on his grip he moved to paintbrushes, oils and acrylics, window constantly open and doing little to abolish the cutting, cloying scent of linseed oil that settled deep and heavy into his walls.

People around him met their soulmate and shared stories, murmured words of lingering disbelief and ecstasy and endless bliss. So  _ beautiful,  _ they spoke softly, words curling around a warm glowing promise. Through all of this, Sherlock drew.

His father bought liquor for the first time in decades. He threw away his hair gel. He stopped wearing cologne. Sherlock sketched the bottle, its peeling, picked label.

He drew. His paintings progressed and became sharper, honing in after tentatively skirting the edges of stylistic choice, as did the answer to the question he'd been thoughtlessly pursuing since that day years and years ago.

Beauty was both happiness and mindless, desperate devotion; to Sherlock, it was only the promise of pain. Beauty was cloying and sugar-sweet, and left its victims hatefully, devastatingly vulnerable.

People saw their soulmates and thought of beauty, but did not think of the desolation that paired. People thought  _ soulmate,  _ and saw beauty, but did not see Sherlock's father, who had never cried in thirty-two years, pass out sobbing on the couch with smashed glass surrounding his limp figure.

Sherlock signed contracts, headlined papers, signed gold-rimmed picture frames. He spoke into big fuzzy microphones about his work, why it was all monochromatic, why he never even tried to experiment—could it be, possibly, that Sherlock Holmes has not yet met his soulmate? Oh, but surely, there were online resources, it couldn't be that he didn't have the money—?

No comment. Push his shades up higher and push through the cameras. He stopped taking interviews two weeks after his first.

Art shows were so  _ boring.  _ And all the  _ people. _

His agent would skin him if he left. A cigarette break would earn him a hefty scolding.

He sighed, took another drag of said future-scolding, and leaned against the wall. His empty stomach protested the nicotine settling in without a buffer. He considered braving the crowds in pursuit of the carrot-topped canapes on the other side of the wall— _ the starving artist look doesn’t really fit you, dear. _

The second after he had decided on action and pushed his foot off the wall to come to an unaided stand, a manicured hand with long, deadly nails landed on his shoulder.

“Mr. Holmes? Excuse me?”

Sherlock turned. Blinked, scanned up-and-down.

Splotch of ink on the wrist, sleeve purposely folded to the elbow. Pouty lips lined lightly; blood red to those who could see it, he guessed. Shining eyes.

“No comment,” he said.

She pursed her lips into a heart. “Oh, but you haven’t heard what I’m offering.”

“I can deduce as much.” Curtly, dismissively. No other way to go about it (no other way he would be willing to, either).

“Come on, Mr. Holmes.” Sweet and saccharine, dripping. Like rotting honey, Sherlock thought fleetingly. “I promise I’ll make it worth your time.”

Security would never find him here: he had made sure of that. Hadn’t been able to follow him, either. This one was sly, sneaky in her search for synthesized scandal. Perhaps he should hire her as a bodyguard instead.

She stepped closer; he breathed in and was assaulted by the cloying scent of roses. A hand landed on his chest and pushed him back against the wall, nails digging into skin through his scarf.

Sherlock shook his head. “Stop,” he said.

She leaned her head in and breathed hot over his ear. Hissed in a faux-whisper. “You don’t want me to.”

“Actually,” said a new voice, “I think he does.”

Sherlock broke away from his stupor faster than the woman could react. He slammed his shoulder against her torso, knocking her back, and took fast, long strides away from the staggering figure.

“I’d call security to escort you away,” he said, “but I like them too much.”

The woman thinned her lips and glared at Sherlock, then shifted his gaze to past his shoulder. A silent battle ensued, the aftermath of which she turned, stiffly, and left.

“Have a nice day!” he called out pleasantly, wiggling his fingers to her back. A second later, he sobered and lowered his voice, addressing the newcomer. “You didn’t have to do that. I had the situation handled.”

A soft snort. “Of course you did.”

Sherlock bristled, ready to retort. He scoffed and turned towards the voice. “I’ll assure you that I did, as you have just seen—” 

Soft-knit patterned cashmere sweater. Hands folded at his chest. Firm, disbelieving line of lips.

Eyes—

His words shrivelled and shattered in his throat. 

Eyes  _ (oh, fuck)  _ narrowed, slight with suspicion and underlying concern. “What? What’s wrong?”

Sherlock took a step back and stumbled, ankle twisting as his knee gave out. He put a hand up against the wall and stared.

He’d heard other people describe the first time they’d seen colour as staggering, wonderful, awe-inducing, breathtaking, a fleet of flamboyant and rambunctious adjectives corralling in a flutter of excitement as they recounted their experience. Absolutely none of it could’ve possibly prepared him for this.

A fleeting, careful touch on his shoulder. He flinched and it fluttered away like a frightened bird. “Sorry. I just—what happened?”

He tried to speak; a dry croak came out. He coughed. “I’m fine.”

“Bullshit you are,” came the clipped response, though he didn’t try to touch him again. “Can you stand up for me? Say something?”

Sherlock coughed again, then straightened and fixed on the most passive face he could muster. He tried to meet the other’s eyes and felt his stomach shoot up to his throat, then wildly plummet to the waxed tiled floor.

People always described their soulmate as beautiful. What Sherlock thought of beauty was well-established. And yet.

No, not beauty, murmured a dry, awed, brother-voice in his mind.  _ Perfection. _

It was too much. He shifted his gaze to his cheek. Better. Medium-dark tone, not grey, but just with the slightest hint of something… other.

Oh, Christ, he needed to stop staring.

“Really,” he said. “I’m fine. I am.”

Hesitation. A hand hovering over his shoulder. “You’re sure?”

_ He  _ didn’t seem to be affected in the slightest. In fact—Sherlock scrutinized him with a more searching gaze, trying his best to discern the differences with newborn-deer eyes. It was a little like staring at the sun after living in the dark for all his life and trying to count the sunspots. Under his sweater was another, similar hue, just the smidge different. Darker jeans—blue. Blue.

Sherlock tore his gaze away; he would spend hours staring if he didn’t stop now. It was obvious enough already: he had already met his soulmate. Previous to Sherlock.

(Or not Sherlock at all. One-sided soulmates were an uncommon occurrence, but Sherlock figured that if anyone would carry the case, it would be him.)

“Yes,” Sherlock lied cleanly through his teeth. “But thank you anyway.”

“I—Yeah. No problem. I mean, happy to help, right?” The man stepped back and shoved his hands into his pockets, then remembered himself and extended his left. “I’m John. Watson. I’ve heard of your art and wanted to drop by while I was in the area. It really is quite beautiful.” 

“Thanks,” Sherlock said again. He shook his hand. John’s palm was warm and rough with callouses. His skin was darker than Sherlock’s, but not only by shade: there was some sort of saturation, now, something other than the lights and darks of black and white. He couldn’t stop looking, noticing, marvelling.

The things he could do with this. The  _ art  _ he could make.

The thought was destroyed nearly as soon as it was created. Perhaps the art, yes, but the implications of the art should he display it to the public were beyond unacceptable. The reactions of the press, the media, the ever-burning question:  _ Who? Who? Who?  _ and, perhaps:  _ Why?  _ There would be no retelling of this experience, this earth-shattering revolution. Not to his agent, not to the press, and certainly, not to John. Sometimes, in the hazy, underwater hours of twilight and yawning dawn, he could still hear his father’s cries.

He retreated his hand. 

“So,” John said. He gestured towards him rather awkwardly. “You, uh. You paint all of it yourself, yeah?”

Despite himself, Sherlock felt his lips turn up. “Is there such thing as a ghost painter?”

John shook his head and huffed out a laugh. “Okay, yeah. Dumb question.”

They lingered. It had been thirteen minutes since Sherlock escaped the museum’s display room. His agent would be furious. He didn’t really care.

John shifted his weight from one foot to another. He cleared his throat and opened his mouth as if to say something, before shutting it closed again.

“Um,” he said. “Well. Nice meeting you, Sherlock.”

Sherlock tilted his head. “Likewise.”

John paused again, began to speak again before an unknown force swallowed the words. He took a step backwards. “You make beautiful art. Again.”

Beauty. Perfection and pain. (He had never thought  _ John  _ could be such a wonderful name.)

“Thank you,” Sherlock said, and watched him walk away, footsteps echoing as he disappeared down the hall.

He broke into the studio of a collaborative artist (happily married with two children and a Yorkshire puppy) and took tubes of paint lined in stained, streaked boxes. He locked the door behind his own studio and experimented for hours with blends and techniques.

His artist’s eye served him well. Though initially struggling with the drastic difference of hues rather than, simply, shades and lines and patterns, he quickly gained control over the blend, the contrast, the push and pull. Like the way he slotted shades into place to establish a piece of blacks and whites and in-betweens, he did the same, amplified, with colours.

He hung new portraits on the walls of his display, and they were all black and white. At night, he painted in all the colours of the rainbow, dried the canvases under his bed, and shoved them into a box in the back of his closet.

Reds and oranges were burning and fiery bright, licking at the edges of the canvas and leaping out. Greens were a soft, content calm, cheery and clean. Jet black mingled well with all and rebirthed them brighter, integrating the old with the new.

Blue was his favourite. Dark, murky blue, navy, nearly brown.

Blacks and whites—how foolish to think that he could live with just blacks and whites.

John began showing up everywhere.

From his shows to his galleries, in the grocery store and in the cafe, within the whirl of colours, he’d catch the blue-brown that followed his memories along the back of his mind wherever he went materialized into a figure standing, sitting, hands laced or pocketed or cupping a hot mug of tea. Sometimes, he’d catch him looking and a thrill of excitement would race down his spine, followed by the sickly tinge of shame, abolishment, reprimand. He couldn’t. He can’t. He avoided.

John cornered him at a table for two one foggy morning.

“Are you avoiding me?” he asked.

“That depends,” Sherlock said.

“On what?”

“Are you following me?”

John staggered, caught. Tossed his head back and sighed at the ceiling. Looked back and smiled ruefully.

“I wanted to ask you a question,” he said.

“I’m all yours,” Sherlock said, and tried not to think of the implications of his instinctual response.

“Great,” John said, and laced his hands in front of him atop the table. “Do you believe in soulmates?”

Sherlock blinked slowly and kept his face impassive as his heart began to race. “I think the decades of hypothesis-compliant cases have proved that point with far more evidence than my belief can shake.”

“Not an answer,” John replied swiftly. Although his hands were steady, Sherlock noted, his left leg was bouncing under the table. He was nervous. “I mean, do you believe in the idea that you have  _ a  _ soulmate. Be-all or end-all.”

Be-all or end-all, Sherlock thought, looking at John. “No,” he said. “I don’t believe in that.”

The tension thrumming in John’s shoulders dropped, but remained present. “Okay,” he said. “Okay, cool. And—your soulmate? I’m assuming you haven’t met them yet?”

“I thought you wanted to ask me one question.”

“Fine. Several.”

Sherlock watched John’s fingers tap an indiscernible rhythm on the coffee-ringed desk (dark mahogany, ringed with reddish stains) and thought that there was no way John could know. Too much to risk, too much on the line—everything, every defense every wall he had painstakingly built over the past decades, sheltering him from the inevitable destruction, vulnerability, that would come if he slipped. “No,” he said.

John’s shoulders slumped. “Good,” he said. His eyes were wide, wildly, impossibly expressive (god, his  _ eyes).  _ “Last question. Get coffee with me?”

Sherlock thought of his mother peering at him with eyes swimming with love and impossible sadness. He thought of the paintings bursting with red, blue, yellow, hidden and shoved and sheltered deep away, unknown. He thought of John’s dark blue sweater that complemented his eyes.

“Okay,” he said.

John had had a soulmate. Her name was Mary. She died in a car crash last Autumn. She had blue eyes. She was beautiful.

Autumn was reaching its zenith that morning, brilliant scarlet and yellows streaking through maple-scented air. 

Sherlock stood up, walked to the bin, and threw away his coffee cup. He reached out to take John’s to do the same.

When he turned back, John was still standing. Sherlock tilted his head and raised an eyebrow.

“You’ve, ah,” John said, and fluttered a hand around his head. “Leaf in your hair.” 

Sherlock ruffled his hair halfheartedly.

“No, not there—here—” John stepped closer and stood up on his tiptoes, plucking something from his head. “There.”

He came down onto the balls of his feet and held the leaf in his hand, holding it up for show. Sherlock took it by the stem, fingers brushing together as he did.

John didn’t step back, standing inches away. There was a flicker in his eyes, something wild and desperate, when he put his hands on Sherlock’s shoulders, a light and careful touch. The question in his eyes was clear even through the murk as he began to lean in.

Sherlock was stunned to stillness for a moment before things clicked back into place. He shoved John in the chest, hard, and staggered three steps back.

John stumbled and regained his footing. He looked up at Sherlock. Hurt and confusion flashed stark and crisp across his face for a hurried, glimpsed second before it was immediately slathered over with none. His lips were tightly pressed, stressed corners.

“Sorry,” he said. “Evidently I read things wrong.”

There was a tremor in Sherlock’s hands. He didn’t speak.

John shoved a hand through his hair (mousy brown, blond sunstreaks) and chuckled. “So you do believe in soulmates, huh.”

“I’ll see you around,” he added when Sherlock didn’t make a move to contribute to the conversation. “Or not. It doesn’t matter.” He raised one shoulder in a half-shrug, gave a small, dry smile, and left.

Sherlock was still holding the leaf in his hand. He looked down at it now: it was crisp, an oak leaf, coral-orange mottled with dark brown spots. He let it fall to the floor, where it twirled, briefly, and joined hundreds and thousands of the same.

He handed his very first coloured piece to his agent a week later. There had been shrieking and shaking and yelling about announcements, media reactions,  _ Who? Who? Who?  _ rapidly turning to  _ Why? What?  _ back to  _ Who? Goddamn it, Sherlock— _

Deny, deny, deny. Refused interview. Another piece, coloured again. No comment.

Speculations swarmed like flies around a rotting carcass. 

On the anniversary of his mother’s death, he locked himself in his studio with a 9-by-5 feet canvas and emerged with a woman with eyes as blue as a summer sky.

He endured half an hour of cameras shoved into his face and microphones and the incessant yammering of  _ Who  _ and  _ Why  _ and childhood influences and struggles and  _ Mental health, tell us Sherlock, how did your mother’s death affect you?  _ before escaping from the suffocating building. He took a walk around the lake, aqua waters speckled with black darting waterbugs.

When he returned late in the day (dusk casting a stunning blend of sky and sun), the crowds had left. One person remained, an outlier, standing in front of the towering painting with his head tilted back so they could stare.

When Sherlock approached them, the man turned and smiled. His mother had lied, Sherlock thought abruptly—his eyes weren’t grey, they were brown and blue and slate and speckles of dark navy, all swirled into a familiar, dulled melancholy that lingered in his irises even now.

“Sherlock,” he said.

Sherlock said, “What are you doing here?”

“I’m here to see you,” his father responded, as if it were obvious. Sherlock snorted.

“That’s not true,” he said. “You’re here to see  _ her.”  _ He flung a hand up, gestured haphazardly at his mother, his wife (his soulmate) gazing down.

Father smiled ruefully. “That, too.” He turned back to the painting, craning his neck high up. “You’ve captured her perfectly. She’s beautiful.”

“Yes,” Sherlock said. “She is.”

Father spoke without taking his eyes off the painting. “So you’ve met your soulmate. And, if the media isn’t lying, you refuse to disclose their identity. I’m loathe to wonder how often the media lies.”

“They aren’t lying,” Sherlock said.

Father turned, then. Fixed piercing grey eyes on him. “Why?”

Unsettled by those eyes  _ (could make a proper lady swoon) _ , Sherlock swallowed. “Because I’ve seen what happens,” he said. “They may be the best years, decades, of your life, but it all comes to an end. Soulmates leave, they—they pass. Everything always ends.” The pain that followed would be too much for him to bear.

His father stood still for a moment, and then silently shook his head.

“You’re a damn fool, Sherlock,” he said. “A coward and a fool. So contemplative, so scared. Overthinking everything all the time.” He tilted his head. “Your mother was the best thing to happen to me, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world. Her death means nothing compared to the things I’ve had. When she leaves everyone else’s memories, she is forever in my mind and even now, she is beautiful.”

He reached out a hand to brush Sherlock’s hair back from his cheek, the way his mother used to do. “Find them, Sherlock. There is no life, no love without risk.”

The door swung shut. The quiet click reverberated like church bells on Christmas Eve.

He sketched an oak leaf on a fresh canvas with a 2B artist’s pencil. Healthy curves and smooth, unbroken lines, splotches of dark patching along the core.

He stepped back and stared. It stared back, unmoving. 

He pulled out his paints, black and white and in-betweens; striped the surface with streaks of grey.

He stepped back. It was silent and still. He wanted paintings to leap off their canvases, to embrace the viewers with staggering potential. This—this was grey. Bland.  _ Boring. _

Sudden anger overtook him, and with a flurry of motion without control, he strode over to his stolen stash. He pulled out pilfered paints, red and orange and burnt sierra, squeezed and stirred and splattered across the screen. Acrylic flames licked the curves of the leaf. His thought ran wild, unrestrained—why did  _ he  _ have to be the one to see everything shrouded in its darkest light, why was he so plaintively terrified of anything that shone,  _ his  _ mother and  _ his  _ father and now his fucked-up view of everything good twisted into evil, impossible, inevitable, shoved away and beaten into submission—soulmates; his very being shook at the thought.

He stepped back. Surveyed the scene. Ran a dripping-paint hand through his hair and felt despair in the darkness of his gut even as his heart soared.

It was beautiful.

“Mr. Holmes! Mr. Holmes!”

A flurry of coats, carrying the crisp scent of winter chill. Black fuzzy microphones and flashing lens.

“What is your inspiration for this piece, Mr. Holmes?”

“Is there symbolism behind the oak leaf?”

“Mr. Holmes, is there meaning behind the colours?”

Security pressed firm hands against the small of his back, ushering him out of the masses, but Sherlock resisted, pushed back, dug in with the heels of his feet until it was made evident that he wished to stop. When this was noticed, the clambering grew tenfold before he turned towards the closest, outstretched microphone and it immediately died into deathly quiet, bated breath, excitement and anticipation building like a thunderstorm in the air— _ Mr. Holmes—? _

“The title of this piece is  _ Rebirth,” _ Sherlock said, and turned away, let the hands on his back lead him into the building and slam the door shut behind him.

“Mr. Holmes?” His agent stood by the door. “There’s someone who wants to see you. I told him you didn’t take visitors, but he refused to leave.”

“Did you call security?” Sherlock asked.

She nodded, suddenly looking abashed. “He said, um. He said—‘I’d let you, but I like them too much.’”

Sherlock blinked, flash of recollection flitting across his face, and then he tossed his head back and laughed.

His agent took a step back with concern. She’d never seen him laugh out of anything but scorn. “Mr. Holmes?” she approached tentatively.

Sherlock stirred a hand through the air. “Call him in,” he said.

John leaned against the doorway with his hands in his pockets.

“Hello, John,” Sherlock said.

John took his hands out of his pockets and set them in front of him, palms overturned towards the ceiling.

“Listen, Sherlock,” he said. He sounded tired. “I see that you’ve met your soulmate. I’m assuming that was around the time we met, and that’s why you stopped me. You said you didn’t believe in them before, but I know how it feels to meet your soulmate—everything changes. No hard feelings. I just wanted to put it out there that—well. I’m sorry.”

He kept speaking, even as Sherlock got up from his desk, moved towards him. He trailed off when Sherlock got so close, he needed to tilt his chin up to meet his eyes.

“What?” he said.

“It’s you,” Sherlock said.

John’s brow furrowed. “What?”

“It was you,” Sherlock said, raising a hand to brush along John’s shoulder, skirting tentatively. “You’re my soulmate.”

John didn’t respond. Sherlock kept speaking, felt the words, so long buried, rise up and tumble out unfiltered.

“My mother. She suffered a health condition and died when I was nine. I saw what it put my father through. I just—I don’t know what could happen if I gave in.” He swallowed hard, and fell to silence.

John’s expression was one of shock and awe. He let his hand rise up, mirroring Sherlock’s, and traced his thumb down the arch.

“Jesus, Sherlock,” he murmured. “You should’ve said earlier.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.” John’s hand rose higher to cup his cheek, warm and rough. Sherlock tilted into the touch and ached.

John ran his thumb under Sherlock’s eyes, brushing dark circles from night after night of furious painting, catharsis on a canvas. “I want you to forget about the future for a second, Sherlock,” he said. “Answer me this question: do you want this? Right now. Not in the future, not before, but now.”

Throat too dry to speak, Sherlock nodded.

Something filled John’s eyes; something like fire. “Good,” he said.

“Do—” Sherlock blurted. “Do you?”

John stilled. “Why would I not?”

“Mary,” Sherlock said. “You’ve already met your soulmate.”

John pursed his lips. “She’d want me to be happy,” he said. “I’m not replacing her. I won’t love her any less by choosing to love you too.”

An internal battle raged; Sherlock shut his eyes and clenched his hands. “If I choose this,” he said. “I’d be frightened, John.”

“Why is that?”

“One day, you’ll die.” Sherlock opened his eyes and looked into navy irises, imagined them dulled and devoid of life. “Or I will. There’s no knowing the possibility of multiple soulmates because everyone stops at one—everyone but you. There’s no knowing if I’m unrequited. We could be incompatible. It may seem unlikely now, but as we know each other better, things get complicated. You could meet someone new, someone better, and I’ll be left with nothing but memories.”

“But isn’t it worth it?” John insisted. “Isn’t the slightest chance enough to  _ try?” _

Sherlock thought of his mother’s warm, chapped lips on his forehead. He thought of his father’s proud, tired eyes. He thought of Autumn leaves and sunsets, brilliant and burning bright in their demise.

He smiled. “I suppose it could be.”

John smiled back, wide and unrestrained. (Beautiful.) When he leaned in to kiss him, Sherlock closed his eyes.

Colours burst behind his eyelids.

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a while, eh?
> 
> School's been busy. I drifted away from fandoms, discovered new ones, drifted back to this one. Realized I'd never written a proper soulmate AU before, and here I am. Alive and kicking in the Sherlock fandom <3
> 
> Hope you enjoyed!


End file.
